I am the one, Not Running, Not Staying, But FACING

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

You can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it

Do you know how to tell who the enemy is, Cassie?

The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.

Could there be irony crueler than this? How, upon his rescue, the truth had brought him here, to a house for the mad, for only a madman believes what every child knows to be true: There are monsters that lie in wait under our beds.